


Constellations

by javasleuth



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluffy, M/M, Multi, Tsukishima Kei is Bad at Feelings, gratuitous camping, tsukki is trying his best but his best just isn’t very good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26361073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/javasleuth/pseuds/javasleuth
Summary: “Come on, Tsukki, it’ll be fun!”That, as far as Tsukishima was concerned, was a lie that exactly one person was allowed to tell. Which is why, rather than simply ignoring it altogether, he instead sighed and slipped his headphones down around his neck, looking up to meet Yamaguchi’s earnest expression.“Let me get this straight. We get one week off of practice, out of the entire year, and you want to spend it…”“Camping!” Yamaguchi finished enthusiastically.“Camping,” Tsukishima clarified, “with the freak twins.”——Preparing for a camping trip with the rest of the third years forces Tsukki to confront a number of unwelcome things—the irritating dynamic between Hinata and Kageyama, the Sendai outdoor goods store, and his own fragile relationship with his older brother, to name a few—but it also illuminates the little pinpricks of light that make up the shape of his feelings toward his best friend. Regrettably, he’s no good at stargazing.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Tsukishima Kei, Hinata Shouyou & Yamaguchi Tadashi, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio & Tsukishima Kei, Tanaka Saeko/Tsukishima Akiteru/Udai Tenma, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi, this could easily be read as an OT4 fic if you want
Comments: 8
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartofthesunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/gifts).



“Come on, Tsukki, it’ll be fun!”

That, as far as Tsukishima was concerned, was a lie that exactly one person was allowed to tell. Which is why, rather than simply ignoring it altogether, he instead sighed and slipped his headphones down around his neck, looking up to meet Yamaguchi’s earnest expression.

“Let me get this straight. We get one week off of practice, out of the entire year, and you want to spend it…”

“Camping!” Yamaguchi finished enthusiastically.

“Camping,” Tsukishima clarified, “with the freak twins.”

“You have to stop calling them twins,” Yamaguchi snorted, sliding into the desk next to Tsukki and swiping a piece of sushi from his untouched bento. “It’s weird.”

“ _ They’re _ weird,” he retorted defiantly.

“They’re our  _ friends _ ,” Yamaguchi persisted. “And our teammates, and there is obviously  _ something  _ going on there so could we please call them literally anything other than related.”

“Yes, Captain-san,” Tsukki replied as dryly as possible, pushing his lunch closer to Yamaguchi, who resisted.

“Tsukki, you gotta eat something, we have practice today.”

“I’m not hungry. It’s your fault for making me think about those two kissing.”

“What’s wrong with kissing?” Yamaguchi asked, with all the delicacy of a point-blank line shot. Tsukki, for once, found himself completely unprepared to deflect.

“Nothing,” he managed, because it was the most immediate response he could seem to pull together. He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, suddenly very self-conscious about his hands and face and desperate for a way to occupy either.

“People kiss, you know. Like all the time. Even people you know.” There was a teasing sort of quality to Yamaguchi’s voice, one that he had seemed to become more and more comfortable using over the course of their high school lives, even—no,  _ especially _ —with the misanthropic blonde.

Tsukki just frowned, because now he really  _ was _ thinking about Hinata and Kageyama kissing, which was uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as thinking about  _ Yamaguchi _ kissing, which is where his traitorous brain had gone next for reasons he had yet to decipher. 

“You don’t have to get all squicky about it,” Yamaguchi continued, peeling a lychee fruit and popping it between his lips .

Tsukki caught himself watching and snapped his gaze away abruptly, refusing eye contact. 

“I’m not being... _ squicky,”  _ he mumbled, flicking at the contents of his bento box with idle chopsticks. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“I didn’t put anything in your mouth!” Yamaguchi protested, which didn’t help.

“ _ Shut up _ , Yamaguchi!” Tsukki slid his headphones back up over his ears pointedly, trying very hard not to acknowledge the fact that he definitely felt his cheeks burning and definitely didn’t want to look at Tadashi’s face right now. It wasn’t like he had done anything  _ wrong _ —thoughts weren’t something that could be controlled, in fact they often didn’t mean anything at all, they were just combinations of chemical impulses and word association, and it certainly wasn’t like he had  _ chosen  _ to visualize anything, especially not all of the distinct individual freckles on his best friend’s face and shoulders as they might look speckled beneath someone else’s hands, and  _ absolutely  _ didn’t ask to be thinking about  _ things  _ going in  _ mouths _ , in fact if anything that one was Yamaguchi’s fault for being the one to belabor the subject—but despite his clear and obvious victimhood in this situation he felt something like guilt or shame knotting itself up in his stomach. In any case, he  _ definitely  _ didn’t want Yamaguchi to have any idea what he was thinking about right now, as it would have felt impolite at best and downright embarrassing at worst. But that was just how brains worked, he reasoned. It wasn’t like he’d never had a weird thought about Yamaguchi before. Yamaguchi probably had weird thoughts about other people too. Maybe even him. It didn’t mean anything. It was just hormones and synaptic impulses. The knotting in his stomach would go away as soon as he thought about something else.

“ _ Gomen _ , Tsukki.” Yamaguchi’s laughter, warm and bright, did absolutely nothing to dissolve the feeling. Thankfully, the ever-persistent captain took it upon himself to change the subject back. “So, camping—are you coming or not?”

“Yes,” Tsukishima huffed. “Obviously. I’m not going to abandon you to the wilderness with the...with those two.”

“Great! You’re gonna love it, I promise.” 

“What exactly will I love about it, do you predict?” At this point Tsukki was just being difficult for difficulty’s sake, knowing full well that—insufferable teammates or not—a week spent with his best friend’s company was preferable to a week spent without it. He had no doubt Yamaguchi must have known that as well, but as always the boy seemed determined to take him in good faith regardless. Besides, a distraction was sorely needed.

“Hmm.” Yamaguchi hummed thoughtfully around another lychee, sucking meditatively on the fruit as he rolled it around in his mouth. Tsukki felt the chopsticks in his hand suddenly snap and shoved them into his jacket pocket reactively. “Huh? Did you say something?” 

“No. Please continue.”

“Mmkay. Well anyway, I know what  _ my  _ favorite part of camping is, but you’ll think it’s dumb. So I’m trying to think of the Tsukki parts. I bet you’ll probably like all the stuff I’m bad at. Like...like how practical it is!” This was evidently considered to be a very insightful and complimentary reveal by Yamaguchi, who beamed proudly in that way that stretched all the way to the corners of his eyes.

“Wow, I’m touched by how interesting and adventurous you clearly think I am. High praise.”

“Aww, Tsukki, don’t be like that. You know I meant it as a good thing.”

“Oh? What’s your favorite part then? Reorganizing the first aid kit? Packing the tent up? Sorry, be still my heart, I can only seem to think of the most enthralling bits.”

“Well now you’re just being stubborn on purpose, and so I’m not gonna tell you my favorite part.” Yamaguchi stuck his tongue out and snapped the lid back onto his bento box before sliding it into his shoulder bag. Tsukki made the conscious, if Herculean, effort to look elsewhere instead, but he couldn’t quite prevent himself from ignoring the other boy’s face entirely.

“Fine. You caught me. I concede.  _ Please _ tell me your favorite part.”

Yamaguchi tilted his head to the side, regarding Tsukki for a prolonged moment before evidently making up his mind and smiling brightly.

“Quality time with my best friend!” he announced, standing up and ruffling Tsukki’s hair as he pulled his bag onto his shoulder. “I’m gonna go find Hinata and Kageyama before the break is over and tell them we’re on. See ya, Tsukki!”

Tsukishima blinked once or twice as he watched his friend bound out of the classroom with long-legged strides. He shook his head and turned his music back on, jumping slightly as something stabbed him sharply in the side. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the destroyed chopsticks. For a moment, he did nothing but stare blankly at them before noticing with mild alarm that his face was aching strangely. He reached up his fingertips reflexively and felt the knot in his stomach seize up in an instant. Since Yamaguchi had touched him, possibly even a good several minutes earlier, he hadn’t stopped smiling.

-*-*

It would have been so much easier, he mused as he half-considered a pair of wool socks, if one of them had done something so far to make this feel like a bad idea. Then he could cast a sidelong glance at Yamaguchi in that silent language of theirs that translated into  _ told you so _ ’s and  _ gomen, Tsukki _ ’s and  _ let’s get out of here _ ’s instead of standing in an outdoor goods store in Sendai listening to an irritatingly reasonable conversation about sleeping arrangements and the merits of different tents in which he refused to be a willing participant. But so far Hinata and Kageyama had proven utterly resistant to all the laws of probability and the day had been very nearly  _ pleasant. _

“A four-person tent makes the most sense,” Kageyama stated, the same way he stated everything else. “There are four of us. And it’s cheaper than doing it another way.”

“A four-person tent doesn’t split four ways once the trip is over,  _ baka, _ ” Hinata thwacked him lightly on the forehead, a dismissive gesture which was much diminished by the fact that he had to stand on his tiptoes to do it. 

“We can just return it,” Kageyama shrugged. “There’s a satisfaction guarantee.”

“How do you know you won’t be satisfied?” Hinata crossed his arms smugly. 

_ Because I’ll be sharing it with you, _ Tsukishima anticipated to himself with a pre-emptive sigh. He put down the socks and began looking for something else he could casually happen to notice.

“Because I’ll be sharing it with you,” Kageyama smirked. Tsukki rolled his eyes.

“Well we’ll still have to figure out who keeps them if we do two partner tents,” Yamaguchi pointed out.

“Yeah, but that’s easy,” Hinata quirked his head to the side as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ll keep one and Kageyama will keep the other.”

“Oh yeah? Why me and Kageyama?” There was a certain note in Yamaguchi’s voice, Tsukki noticed, that the captain only got when he already knew the answer to a question but was indulging himself in hearing the reasoning coming from someone else. He wondered whose benefit it was for this time. Despite himself, it made him almost curious to hear Hinata’s logic.

“Because I can’t take our tent on the plane to Brazil when I graduate,” Hinata explained. “And Tsukishima will refuse to keep yours even if you ask him to.”

Tsukki snapped his head around in indignation and Yamaguchi immediately doubled over with laughter. Hinata, for his part, didn’t seem to find the joke.

“How do  _ you  _ know I wouldn’t want to keep it?” Tsukki kept his tone as dismissive as possible.

Hinata lit up like a Christmas tree and very nearly began to vibrate with perceived victory.

“Wait, so you  _ do  _ like camping?!”

“I have...no strong feelings on it,” Tsukishima scoffed. He felt the wire snare of the argument neatly laid around him but had never backpedaled in his life and had no desire to learn now, so he followed the only impulse that ever overruled his otherwise rigidly ordered brain and dug his heels in further. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to get my money’s worth.”

“Well who else would you use a two-person tent with besides Yamaguchi anyways?”

“Yeah, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi grinned, enjoying the moment just a little too much for Tsukishima’s tastes. “Who else?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he frowned, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose dismissively. “Anyone. Akiteru, maybe. That’s not the point.”

“Aki-san already has a tent! He went camping with Saeko-san and Tenma-san two months ago, remember?” Yamaguchi pressed, that grin still tugging at his lips and scrunching up the corners of his eyes in a way Tsukki was very annoyed about noticing. And he did  _ not  _ remember that, either, incidentally, which did nothing to diminish his embarrassment at the whole situation. Why did  _ Yamaguchi  _ remember that? And furthermore, if he had that knowledge, why had he come to the conclusion that the best way to spend their fleeting vacation was by following the example Akiteru had set with his significant others? Did that mean something? Or was Yamaguchi just bringing it up on purpose to get under his skin?

“And,” Yamaguchi added before he could find a suitable retort to any of that information, “we already established that Kageyama will keep the other tent, so if the two of you decide to go on another trip together you’ll be fine.”

Now Tsukki  _ knew  _ he was doing this on purpose.

“Great,” he replied dryly. Winning no longer felt important here, only survival.

“So Yamaguchi and Kageyama will keep the tents,” Hinata looked between him and Yamaguchi with a mildly confused expression, trying in vain to puzzle out the subtext he was missing. It was the only time Tsukki had ever felt a kinship with the redhead. He didn’t care for it. “Is that it?”

“Fine,” Tsukki clipped. “It doesn’t matter to me. You were right, I don’t want it.”

“I knew it!” Hinata chirped gleefully, pumping his fist in the air. His expression rapidly downturned as a thought occurred to him. “You know, I still don’t get how come Tsukishima-san gets to date the Tiny Giant.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kageyama scowled.

“What, were you hoping to date the Tiny Giant, Shoyo?” Yamaguchi teased, pulling the now-agreed-upon tents down from the shelf and examining the packages with keen eyes. They flickered up to Tsukki, once, as if inviting him into the joke as an apology which Tsukki did

not accept. “I think he’s a little old for you.”

“No! I just mean he was already dating Big Sis Tanaka! He should have to choose!”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, dumbass,” Kageyama shoved his hands in his pockets with a furrowed brow and sulking toward a display of hiking boots. “You don’t even have  _ one  _ partner to worry about.”

“Well neither do you,  _ Bakeyama _ !” Hinata jumped after him. “Besides, if I wanted to, I bet I could date all sorts of people too!”

“What’s stopping you then, idiot?!”

“I just don’t feel like it, that’s all, what’s your excuse!?”

“That’s none of your business, and I wouldn’t tell you anyway…”

Their bickering faded out of earshot as Kageyama and Hinata followed each other back into the further corners of the store. Yamaguchi snickered, raising a knowing eyebrow that Tsukki involuntarily knew was supposed to recall their conversation from the day before. He frowned and tried very hard not to think about kissing or the people who might do it. He tried doubly hard not to think about why his best friend might have pressed Hinata about dating.  _ About dating a boy,  _ his mind added unhelpfully, and his frown deepened into a scowl.

“ _ Gomen,  _ Tsukki,” Yamaguchi said, without meaning it. “You wanna help me pick out a sleeping bag while they’re occupied?”

“No,” Tsukishima answered flatly. “I want to know when you and my brother got so close.”

It was a stupid question that served no real purpose. Akiteru had always liked Yamaguchi, and Yamaguchi had always been better at talking to him than Kei himself was, so there had been no shortage of dinners or playdates or road trips where the two of them had learned to get along splendidly. But Tsukki was feeling unbalanced, and the only way he knew to react to the sensation was by pushing someone else down.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yamaguchi asked, wrinkling up his nose in confusion. His stupid, freckled nose. Tsukki wondered without meaning to if  _ Hinata  _ ever bothered to notice the myriad ways in which Yamaguchi broadcast his myriad moods, if  _ he  _ knew how to read the words that spelled themselves out in the lines and speckles of his face. He decided probably not, because it was the answer that let him feel self-righteous—which was sometimes a passable substitute for feeling right.

“I just think it’s interesting,” he commented as offhandedly as possible, “that you and Akiteru both decided to get so into camping all of a sudden.” And then, against his better judgment and almost entirely without meaning to, thought bitterly of the Tiny Giant and his feral disciple and added, “with your boyfriends.”

Yamaguchi froze, his hand halfway through trailing down the sleeve of a flannel. He clutched at it in a way that reminded Tsukishima, weirdly, of a kid clinging to his mom’s skirt, something vulnerable and reactive—and that brought a feeling he couldn’t immediately identify surging up in his chest. 

“That’s not fair, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi said quietly. Whatever the feeling in Tsukki’s chest was, it coiled a little tighter, but he didn’t have time to unwind and examine it before the inexplicable moment seemed to have passed and Yamaguchi was brushing past him to look at the aforementioned display of sleeping bags. Tsukishima just sort of stood there, watching him for a moment while trying to figure out whether to approach or retreat, but unfortunately standing is not an apolitical act at six feet tall—it’s always  _ looming  _ or  _ menacing  _ or  _ hovering  _ or  _ towering  _ and Tsukki simply didn’t care enough for the language of his own body to learn how to speak it any differently. So  _ standing _ , he supposed, was all really just the same as  _ staying _ , and if that’s the case he might as well do it closer to Yamaguchi.

“You’re hovering,” Yamaguchi told him.

“I’m not.” He was. And then, because he couldn’t get his mouth around  _ sorry,  _ the next best thing—“What are you doing?”

“I’m checking the temperature ratings,” Yamaguchi answered, preoccupied as he scanned the info tag in his hands.

“Why?” Tsukki frowned. “It’s summer. And besides, it’s not like we’re really going to be using them again.”

“Okay,  _ you  _ might not use them again,” Yamaguchi sighed, putting the bag down and turning to face him with a resignation that made it seem as if Tsukki was supposed to consider this a victory. It didn’t feel very much like one. “I get it. You’re doing this as a one-time-only favor to me, and you’ve made that  _ very  _ clear. But  _ I  _ am also going on this trip and  _ I  _ happen to think I would like to be comfortable.” He turned back to the task at hand and carried on quietly for a moment before adding, reluctantly, “Besides, you  _ are  _ going this time, even if you never do again, and you always run cold.”

_ Not always _ , he thought stubbornly, which the heat rising to his cheeks seem determined to prove on a technicality. He crossed his arms because it was something to do, and stepped just close enough to read the tags over Yamaguchi’s shoulder.

“I’m just...energy-efficient, maybe.” Tsukki tested.

Yamaguchi snorted and smiled just a little.

“You’d have to be,” he snarked back, and Tsukki was relieved. “You don’t have any to spare.”

“I don’t see the point in working that hard if I’m sharing a tent with a radiator anyway.”

“I’m not a radiator!” Yamaguchi protested, but only a little, so that they both knew they weren’t really fighting anymore. “Normal people are just warm, Tsukki!”

“Normal people might  _ be  _ warm,” Tsukishima ceded casually. “But that’s not what you are. You’re hot, Yamaguchi, speaking from...experience…”

He heard it the second it was out of his mouth, and judging by the arch of Yamaguchi’s eyebrow and the way he was biting back his lower lip, so had the captain. He blinked once, twice, waiting for the moment where Yamaguchi would say something, anything, preferably unrelated, to move them past the moment and back into a scenario where Tsukki was not responsible for figuring out how to follow up on that. Yamaguchi did no such thing. Tsukishima’s mind was shouting at him in half-formed phrases and desperate fragments but—as a matter of policy—nothing ever,  _ ever  _ made it out of his mouth incomplete. So he continued to say nothing, simply to stare in increasing discomfort until Yamaguchi finally cracked in a bout of laughter that was either enormously relieving or deeply insulting and in any case wouldn’t be examined until much, much later that night.

_ Gomen, Tsukki,  _ he anticipated, but it didn’t come.

“Come on,” Yamaguchi said instead, shaking his head as if to disperse the last of the smile and pressing a sleeping bag into Tsukishima’s arms. “Let’s go grab the others before they break something.”

Tsukki let him pass before chancing a look down at the sleeping bag Yamaguchi had apparently deemed appropriate. He didn’t know much about specialty camping equipment, but a few words caught his notice.

_ EXTRA TALL! _

_ GUARANTEED COMFORTABLE TO 0C! _

_ Not always,  _ he thought again, frowning then following after Yamaguchi, and again he was correct on a technicality. He really didn’t feel very cold at all. In fact, in the center of his chest, he felt almost warm.

-*-*

“Kei? ...Kei-kun?”

Knock knock knock knock.

Tsukki frowned and sat up on his bed, pulling the headphones down around his neck but keeping his hands on them lest the person on the other side of the door get any unwelcome ideas about the length of this intrusion.

“It’s unlocked.”

“That’s not the same as an invitation and we both know it,” his brother’s voice called back good-naturedly.

“Correct,” he responded placidly, and laid back down. He counted the seconds before Akiteru gave up and just came in anyway. Sometimes it was as high as twenty. 

“Well I would  _ prefer  _ an  _ invitation,”  _ the voice pressed instead.

“I understand.” The volume on his headphones grew slowly louder. For a moment he wondered if he had drowned out his brother’s voice with the music, or if Akiteru had simply left altogether. Then, after a beat,

“Tadashi-kun called.”

Tsukki sighed, loudly but for no one’s benefit, and pulled himself up off the bed to go open the door.

“What did he want?”

“What did who want?” Akiteru asked pleasantly.

“Yamaguchi. He called?”

“Hm. Not ringing a bell. Can I come in?”

Kei frowned harder, to no effect, and he found himself almost regretting the careful, incremental amelioration that the past two years had wrought on his relationship with his older brother. At one point, that frown would have been enough to completely dissuade Akiteru into an apologetic retreat. Now, unfortunately, they understood each other better than that. Maybe a little too well, he thought, stepping aside to let his brother enter as he tried not to think about why Akiteru had chosen  _ that  _ specific line to get his attention. He was more upset to find that, even knowing he had been baited, it did nothing to alleviate his curiosity.

“What do you want?” he deadpanned, as disaffected as he could possibly manage.

“Does a man need a reason to want to hang out with his younger brother?” Akiteru replied sunnily, taking a seat cross-legged on the floor, very much in the middle of things Kei would have undoubtedly insisted he wasn’t doing anyway.

“He does if the brother is me. I’m busy.”

“Packing?”

“Yes,” Tsukki lied, because it made a lot more sense than the actual answer, which was ‘not packing.’

Akiteru glanced at the still-empty backpack stuffed under Kei’s desk.

“Do you...need a hand?”

“No,” Tsukki lied again. There wasn’t a good reason.

Another of those stiff and clumsy silences which seemed to plague him so frequently these days fell between them like a stage curtain. He had just resigned himself to the prospect of never speaking again when, unexpectedly, Akiteru ventured bravely across the conversational divide.

“You want to know something kind of embarrassing?” he asked. The question caught Kei off guard—not only for the nature of it, but the sheer asking of it in the first place. He still wasn’t sure what to make of this strange soft space they were trying to stake out between the two of them. It felt overgrown with years of thorny silence and tangled-up intentions, and even as the clearing of it grew, there was always the sense—the fear, maybe, though that was too vulnerable a word to ever be allowed to take hold—that they might end up pulling back all of the weeds of their relationship only to find nothing else remained. That this was all there was, and emptying it of the messy parts would just leave it...well, empty. 

“Okay.” 

“When I went camping a couple months ago,” Akiteru stated casually. “I did an absolutely awful job packing. I only packed for warm, dry, midday weather—t-shirts, mostly. I was totally underprepared. I didn’t bring a rain jacket, or a sweatshirt for the early morning, or extra dry socks…”

He trailed off, letting the thread of the story drift for a moment untethered. It was an invitation, or an inquiry, one of those spaces they had started leaving for each other now where walls used to be.

“That sounds miserable,” Kei frowned, already making mental notes from the list Akiteru had generously and discreetly provided. He figured this was where he could ask a question, if he had one, which he didn’t.

“It was, at first.” His brother shrugged. Tsukki expected him to continue that thought, anticipated the  _ but then… _ to follow and was surprised when it didn’t come.

“But then?” he prompted. Akiteru seemed to consider it for a moment, thoughtfully examining his nails before standing up and smiling with a shrug.

“But then I discovered it was an extremely convenient excuse to spend mornings and evenings snuggled up close to my tent mates.”

Kei’s frown deepened.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to  _ need  _ an excuse for that if you’re already dating someone,” he observed dryly, then corrected himself. “Someones.”

He hadn’t meant to be funny; Akiteru laughed anyway.

“No, I guess not. But you know what, Kei-kun? Sometimes it’s easier to ask for what you want if you pretend you’re asking for something else.”

That struck Tsukki in a way that felt uncomfortably interesting. He didn’t care for it at all.

“That just sounds like bad communication skills,” he replied airily, dismissing whatever point his brother had been trying to make. “I feel bad for your partners— _ what  _ is so funny?”

“I’m dying of irony poisoning,” Akiteru managed in between breathless giggles. 

“We’re done here. Get out. Go. Office hours are over.”

Akiteru held up his hands in surrender and made his way to the door still trying in vain to suppress the laughter that had overtaken him. He stopped just short of exiting, with one hand on the doorframe.

“By the way,” he managed. “Tadashi-kun really  _ did  _ call earlier.”

“Oh?” Tsukki made the conscious effort to sound as disinterested as possible. 

“Mhm.”

That stubborn silence again.

“What did he need?” Kei sighed, breaking first.

“Believe it or not, Kei, he actually called to talk to me.”

“To talk to  _ you? _ ” the frown that had been lingering just out of reach of Tsukki’s features returned, tinged with his least favorite emotion—confusion. “Why?”

“Mm, nothing important…” Aki shrugged and drummed his fingers idly on the doorframe before glancing back with a sly smile. “Just needed some advice on packing.”

He slipped out the door and down the hall without another delay, leaving the younger Tsukishima standing with a blankly flustered expression, the unasked-for thought of Yamaguchi in a t-shirt on a chilly morning, and a still-empty backpack.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHA OOPS THIS IS 13K WORDS NOW WHAT IS PACING

Of  _ course  _ he had to be the one to drive because of  _ course  _ he was the only one with a driver's license, which of  _ course  _ meant he had to be up earlier than anyone else to make the already stupidly early drive.

“Remind me why you don’t have a license,” Tsukki remarked flatly when Yamaguchi got in the car, yawning widely and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Because,” Yamaguchi explained with a drowsy grin. “I freaked out during the test and overthought everything, and when I went to take it again, you said  _ why the rush, Tadashi-chan, I’ll drive you anywhere you could ever need to go.” _

“That’s not  _ exactly  _ what I said,” Tsukki scowled and adjusted his rear view mirror. “And I definitely didn’t call you  _ Tadashi-chan.” _

“It was implied.”

Kei was about to ask him what exactly that was supposed to mean, how a person was supposed to just  _ imply _ something as specific as calling your best friend since childhood a thing which you had never ever called him before, not even once, and you knew that for a fact because there was no way it would have happened without you being painfully aware of it, but before he could open his mouth to do so he was interrupted by Yamaguchi hissing with sharp surprise and the dull  _ thwack  _ of a kneecap against hard plastic.

“You moved my seat!” he pouted accusingly.

“I did what?” Tsukki was taken aback.

“You moved my seat forward. I don’t have any leg room.”

“Akiteru took the car yesterday.” It wasn’t an apology, in fact it might not even have been an explanation. But it was what he had to offer, because his brain was choosing to fixate on the fact that Yamaguchi had called it  _ his  _ seat. Not  _ the  _ seat, not the passenger seat, not the shotgun seat—a turn of phrase Tsukki found distasteful—but  _ his  _ seat. His seat as in ‘the passenger seat of the Tsukishima family SUV’, or his seat as in ‘next to Tsukki?’ There was not a measurable difference between the two answers, realistically, and if he tried to verbalize the distinction he knew Yamaguchi would just wrinkle up his nose and laugh, and it would put him in the specific kind of bad mood that came with being unable to translate his thoughts into things which could be logically manipulated and made sense of. So he changed the subject. “I need you to get directions to Hinata’s house.”

“We’re not going to Hinata’s house,” Yamaguchi replied, already plugging his phone into the car jack and swiping through songs until he found one he liked. “Just over to Kageyama’s.”

“Oh?” Tsukki raised an eyebrow as he kept his eyes responsibly on the road. “Hinata’s not coming?”

“Don’t get too excited,” Yamaguchi rolled his eyes, which Tsukki knew without looking because he had learned long ago which kinds of comments made Yamaguchi roll his eyes and found he tended to make a lot of them lately. “He’s coming, he just spent the night at Kageyama’s.”

“That’s—“

“Very considerate of them,” Yamaguchi cut him off pointedly, “to not make you drive all the way to the other side of the mountain this early in the morning.”

“Which is exactly what I was going to say.”

Yamaguchi just snorted disbelievingly in response, but they both smiled.

“What are you doing?” Yamaguchi suddenly asked.

“Hm?” Tsukki had no idea what he might be referring to.

“You never take your eyes off the road. Ever.”

“What are you talking about?” Kei frowned, dutifully flicking his turn signal as he turned onto Kageyama’s street. “I didn’t take my eyes off the road.”

“Yes you did,” Yamaguchi protested, sitting up straighter. “You glanced over here.”

“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t glance anywhere.”

“You did! You totally glanced. What were you looking at?” Yamaguchi twisted his head nearly all the way around trying to crane his neck for a view back down the road they’d just turned off of.

“I wasn’t looking at anything,” Tsukki insisted, annoyed. “And don’t do that, you’ll snap your neck if I have to slam on the brakes.”

“Don’t do what? I thought you weren’t taking your eyes off the road.”

“I have  _ peripherals, _ Yamaguchi, I don’t need to turn to see—“

“You missed Kageyama’s house.”

“I didn’t. He lives further down.”

“It’s the one with Hinata jumping up and down in the front yard.”

“Hm.”

“Tsukki. Tsukki! Don’t just—you have to turn around!”

“Well it’s a bit late for that now, don’t you think—“

“Tsukkiiiii—!”

Despite his protests, Yamaguchi was laughing, hard, and for a brief moment Tsukishima was confronted with the distinct possibility that he wasn’t actually teasing—that some part of him was fully ready to just keep driving, somewhere, anywhere, with Yamaguchi and his bright, shrill, birdcall laughter and his lopsided grin and his terrible taste in music and the desire to see how quickly he could put 3,000 kilometers between them and the rest of the world. That realization was followed by another, more sobering one— which was that this line of thinking was not, in all likelihood, the way that one was supposed to think about their friend. Not even their best friend. Not even their most enduring and steadfast companion from childhood, the one person they ever really felt comfortable around in a world of people and interactions that made them feel persistently stiff and uncomfortable, not even if that comfort had recently started to feel less and less like a comfort and more like a humming beneath his skin, a feeling he didn’t like but wanted to know more about, a feeling that he felt intuitively ashamed of even without really understanding it. 

He stopped the car, somewhat abruptly, and executed a neat three point turn without saying a word. Yamaguchi’s laughter died awkwardly and his smile faltered in Tsukki’s peripherals as they pulled up outside Kageyama’s house. It’s possible he was about to say something—it sort of felt like maybe he was—but Tsukishima didn’t turn his head to confirm it. Not even for a glance. That skin-tingling hum was unbearable, the loudest it had ever been, and he felt his entire body stiffen in retaliation. He had never felt more physically aware of the presence of the boy in the shotgun seat, but despite that buzzing, burning proximity, he had also never felt further away from him than in that moment. There was this fear prickling at the back of Tsukishima’s neck, the terrifying certainty that if he turned to look at Yamaguchi right now, some huge and terrible thing would be revealed which he couldn’t ever again unsee. He kept his knuckles white on the steering wheel and his sightline directly ahead. He imagined the faces Yamaguchi might be making in this suffocating silence—confusion, concern, hurt feelings, all very predictably Yamaguchi-y emotions—and tightened his grip to keep himself from looking.

“I’m sorry,” he managed, just barely getting his throat around the words, but he was cut off by Hinata hammering on the driver-side window. 

“Hey,  _ Stupidshima _ , you gotta unlock the car!”

The tension in the car dissolved immediately, shattered by the sudden reminder of other bodies in the universe. Tsukki scowled and pointedly depressed the button to pop the trunk. The edge of the early morning air felt blissfully sharp as it flooded the car through the open door, snapping the world neatly back into place with cool composure.

“I told Kageyama you were gonna pass his house if he didn’t turn the porch light on!” Hinata’s voice rattled on uninterrupted in the background.

“I didn’t want to wake my sister, dumbass. Besides, he found it, didn’t he?”

Tsukishima wasn’t listening. He finally glanced over at Yamaguchi, who broke eye contact the second they met, and would only look down at his phone screen, an odd expression knitting his features together. Kei’s face felt hot and weirdly rigid. He averted his own gaze as well, grateful for the steering wheel to occupy his hands, and turned up the volume on the music to excuse himself from having to pay attention to the bickering that underscored Hinata and Kageyama’s attempts to pack their gear into the trunk.

However, by the time they made it to the campsite several hours later, Tsukishima had come to find himself unexpectedly grateful for the nonstop conversation the two of them engaged in. It was convenient background noise, and a helpful distraction from the fact that Yamaguchi, for the remainder of the ride, said nothing.

-*-*

“Hah! That’s game point again!” Hinata crowed excitedly, barely able to keep his feet on the ground. He pointed accusingly at Kageyama through the net. “Stop letting us win just because Tadashi-kun is the captain! I want a rematch!”

Kageyama scowled, cocking his head as he contemplated his retort. Tsukishima, bent over with his hands resting on his knees, understood that look and the gears that turned behind it. Kageyama was trapped between rejecting the notion that he’d thrown the match, and therefore admitting Hinata and Yamaguchi had outplayed them, or letting himself be baited into pretending he’d lost on purpose and sacrificing his pride. Neither was true, obviously. The truth was that  _ Tsukishima _ had lost the match, and he was vaguely annoyed that nobody was willing to come right out and say it. 

“No rematch,” Kageyama stated firmly after a moment of thought and a brief, flickering glance in Kei’s direction. “We need to finish setting up camp.”

“Just one more set!” Hinata protested. “We can switch teams! I wanna hit Tsukishima-kun’s tosses!”

“No,” Tsukki replied flatly, standing up and stretching out his spine. “You don’t.”

“Yes I do,” Hinata stuck his tongue out. “If I can score off of  _ your  _ tosses, I could hit anything.”

Yamaguchi suppressed a snicker, but not quickly enough to deny that it happened. Tsukki felt himself retreat inward, clutching for the familiar comfort of a shell, a shield. 

“Oh, you’re probably right,  _ Sho-chan _ ,” he remarked blithely, waving off the comment with the impenetrable smile and grating dismissiveness that slid over his wounded pride like a glove. “But it’s no fun for anybody here to play down to my level.”

Hinata faltered, visibly taken aback and with pink spots blooming on his cheeks at the use of the unexpected pet name. He frowned indignantly. Next to him, Yamaguchi’s face telegraphed something between guilt and concern, but Tsukishima refused to meet his eyes and figure out which it was. It didn’t matter. There was a reaction, and that was all he wanted. Bitterly satisfied, he turned his back and flicked a dismissive hand at them all as he walked off toward the car. For some reason—and really, nothing about this was surprising—they had unpacked the net before anything else, and left the rest of their supplies in the car, pushing back anything that might actually serve their stay here until after they were all sweaty and exhausted. A shame, because now, rather than being able to retreat to a tent and dismiss himself for a midday nap, he had to go through the potentially mortifying process of figuring out how to set up a campsite. Still—it beat whatever was happening at the net. 

Yamaguchi had at least stopped staring at his phone, stopped rejecting Tsukishima’s existence and proximity, but that wasn’t to say things had taken a turn for the better, exactly. He had suggested pairing off differently than usual, leaning on the reasoning that he and Hinata could both stand to practice setting and that Kageyama might like to work on serve receives for a change, but Tsukki knew better. He had acquiesced, silently grateful for the flimsy barrier between them, although it became apparent very quickly that it was much harder to be across from Yamaguchi than it would have been simply to work around him. On this side of the net, all he had to worry about was the ball—Kageyama was irrelevant outside of his ability to consistently deliver it. But Tsukishima’s primary responsibility on the court, his usefulness, was—through either the poetry or irony of life—the study of opposition: to know intimately all the forms of resistance and to leave the terms of trust and faith and camaraderie to those better suited to it. He studied the enemy. In fact, it seemed like the most he ever really allowed himself to look at a person was on the other side of a cotton web and the pretense of strategy.

He thought, as he sometimes did, of Kuroo. 

It wasn’t very often that Tsukishima felt known by other people; in fact, it was a cosmic rarity. He had come, over the years, to accept that he could be appreciated, or acknowledged, or in certain very intentional cases could make himself understood. He recognized that there were people and places and circumstances which held space for him, instances where he was permitted to feel a certain sense of closeness or obligation or mutual respect. Akiteru loved him, Kageyama sometimes shared a moment of begrudging alignment with him. Coach Ukai saw him, took note of him at moments with an insight that sometimes felt unexpectedly keen. And Yamaguchi, alone among a sea of other people, had  _ learned  _ him, had simply committed himself to the act of becoming fluent in Tsukki’s habits and meanings and idiosyncrasies to such an extent that it was sometimes easy to pretend it was effortless. 

But when it came down to  _ knowing _ , to that spark of recognition that felt all at once like an infuriating violation of privacy and an overwhelming relief, there was only one person he was convinced had anything in him that approached a true, significant sameness. If you had asked him two years ago what his relationship was to the rival team’s captain, Tsukki would have been perfectly prepared to admit that Kuroo was a key mentor in his athletic development, but beyond that nothing more than a passingly familiar acquaintance. It was only in retrospect, looking at it from the other side of a period of transformation in his life, that he was able to discern the truth was more complicated than that. He had come since then to recognize that core sameness as the source of an intense fascination with the older boy, a connection that felt innate rather than earned. And then there was that  _ other  _ part of it all, the thing he knew without allowing himself to know, the shape of an attraction he sometimes glimpsed out of the peripherals of his own self-awareness but which remained, on the whole, distant and abstract and theoretical. He flexed his fingers frustratedly as he stared at the trunk of the car, wishing he had someone here right now who could look at him, even in a smirking, feline sort of way, and lay out the pieces of himself in a way he could understand. But he didn’t have Kuroo here, he just had himself, a poorer facsimile with all of the insufferability and none of the tempered insight. He stared uselessly at the car, trying to invent or imagine helpful things someone might say to him.

“It’s unlocked,” Kageyama said, unhelpfully.

“I know it’s unlocked,” Tsukki snapped, jumping slightly. He had not noticed his teammate’s approach, and it rattled him.

Kageyama opened his mouth as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it and cocked his head thoughtfully. The scowl on his face shifted into something more objective. This was a new phase for the setter, a sort of ongoing experiment in trying to practice emotional recognition the way he practiced fingertip pushups or precision tosses, as a necessary component of athleticism. More than once Tsukki and Yamaguchi had shared a laugh about it on their late walks home, at the clumsy but genuine attempts which had, admittedly, made progress as rapidly and decisively as any other skill he chose to acquire. 

“If you and Yamaguchi are fighting,” he said finally, “you should have said something before we came on this trip.”

“Before this trip,” Tsukki replied snidely, with that same practiced and infuriating pleasant-plastic smile, “I didn’t know we were. If you have the details, please, do tell.”

There was another beat again, that moment where Tsukishima could almost watch the wheels spinning behind Kageyama’s eyes.

“If you aren’t fighting, then why aren’t you talking?”

“Are we not talking? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Look, dumbass—“ Kageyama’s patience was apparently wearing thin as his face turned stormy again. A year ago that would have felt like a little victory, to Tsukishima. Now it didn’t really feel like anything. It made him wonder, idly, why he kept doing it. “I don’t give a damn if you have a good time this week or not.”

“That’s very kind, Kageyama-kun, I’m touch—“

“But if you aren’t on speaking terms with Yamaguchi,” Kageyama continued, cutting him off with a directness that made Tsukki sober slightly. “Who is he supposed to spend the whole time talking to?”

Tsukishima wasn’t sure what compelled him to answer, because he didn’t like where the question took him.

“Hinata, I suppose.”

“Hinata,” Kageyama agreed. 

The statement hung in the air for a moment, full of implications they were both too stubborn to voice and too distrustful to assume.

“I don’t want to share a tent with you,” Kageyama continued after a moment. 

“Agreed.”

“And I don’t think you want to share one with Hinata.”

“Very insightful.”

“Then fix it.”

“Gee, thanks, Kageyama,” Tsukishima deadpanned. “That clears it all up. Now I know exactly what to do. I’ll just go tell Yamuguchi that you and I talked it over and decided it would be better if everything was fine.”

“Well—why isn’t it?” Kageyama sort of shifted his weight awkwardly, as if he knew this was the right question to ask but felt a profound discomfort at the idea of actually doing it.

Tsukishima laughed, a sort of clipped and bitter sound, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets as he turned around and leaned his weight on the car. He felt the naked absence of his headphones around his neck as he shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Laugh if you must. But there it is. The great observer has no  _ fucking  _ clue what happened.”

He felt the weight of the car dip slightly beneath him as Kageyama came to sit next to him, arms crossed contemplatively. 

“What were you thinking about before I came over here?” Kageyama asked. It was not the question Tsukishima had been expecting. That was probably the only reason he gave an honest answer.

“Kuroo-san,” he stated simply. This was obviously not the answer Kageyama had been expecting, either.

“Huh? From Nekoma?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Highness,” Tsukki sighed wearily, looking up at the sky. “Why do our brains do anything?”

Kageyama, again, considered this.

“Sometimes,” he stated tentatively, “I think about Oikawa.”

“Huh?” Tsukki snapped his focus back down to the setter’s face, curious despite himself. “Oikawa Tooru?”

“Uhuh.”

It was Tsukishima’s turn to consider this piece of information. 

“Okay. I’ll bite. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Kageyama shrugged. “And it pisses me off.  _ He  _ pissed me off. So thinking about him still makes me angry. But...I also always felt like...like he had something I needed. It drove me crazy.”

“Mm.” Tsukki hummed vaguely in what could have been charitably interpreted as agreement. 

“It was always like that.  _ He  _ was always like that. And I think he knew it, and that made it worse.”

“As if he needed help being worse,” Tsukki snorted. They both smirked, which was maybe the closest the two of them had ever been to sharing a laugh. It was like that, for a second, the quiet, grudging companionship. Then Kageyama seemed to grow serious again. He cast a wary glance at Tsukishima, and made rare eye contact as he opened his mouth again.

“I think,” he said carefully, choosing his words. “He drove me crazy the same way Hinata drives me crazy.”

Tsukishima’s smirk faded.

“As a rival, you mean.”

Kageyama frowned—not in the way he usually did, not a frustrated failure to communicate, but something a little more vulnerable, a little sad. 

“No,” he said simply. He stood up to leave. Tsukki wanted to tell him to wait, wanted to ask him what he meant so he didn’t have to admit he already knew, wanted to interject some sort of plausible denial—to say  _ we are not the same, this is not the same, whatever you’re talking about, it isn’t me _ . Kageyama might have been waiting on something like that, or maybe just on anything at all, but when it didn’t come, he averted his gaze and made another statement. “I’m going to go tell Hinata we need to collect wood and start a fire. You and Yamaguchi should set up the tents.”

“Kageyama.”

Kageyama stopped but didn’t turn around, just tilted his head in a way that implied he was listening. Tsukishima hesitated for a moment, translating his intentions into the fractured dialect they spoke.

“Take your time,” he finally managed. “With the firewood. Take a  _ lot  _ of time.”

Kageyama paused, then nodded, and walked away, leaving Tsukishima holding too many thoughts and the other half of an understanding he wished he didn’t share.

-*-*

“Can I ask you something?”

Tsukishima considered this.

“No.”

“Tsukkiiii.”

Tsukishima sighed. They were nearly finished with the tents, with only a handful of seemingly unrelated parts still being puzzled into the structure of it all, and the quiet that had fallen over their tasks, while a bit unusual, had actually managed not to be unpleasant. Tsukki had even started to believe that might mean they were going to avoid talking about it altogether, avoid talking about  _ anything,  _ maybe, that they could just make camp and then it would feel like they had finally arrived somewhere they were supposed to be, and the strange sort of process of getting there could be forgotten. So no, he really did not want Yamaguchi to ask him something.

“Can it wait?” he asked, holding up the instruction manual in his hands as if that was an excuse.

“I thought you probably wouldn’t wanna talk once Shoyo and Kageyama got back,” Yamaguchi shrugged, very reasonably.

“You caught me, detective,” Tsukishima deadpanned. “I guess I just don’t feel quite as cozy with  _ Shoyo _ as you do.”

Yamaguchi smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was his captain smile, his polite way of indicating that he had had quite enough of the bullshit, thank you, and Tsukki wondered idly why it had taken this long for himself to be on the receiving end of it.

“That’s pretty funny, Tsukki,” he commented lightly. “Because I did notice that you called him  _ Sho-chan _ on the court earlier.”

“That’s different—“

“I know,” Yamaguchi interrupted him, turning to face him directly. “ _ You  _ only act close with people as a mean joke. Trust me. I know I’m no genius, but I  _ had  _ figured that one out.”

“Yamaguchi…” Tsukki started, hoping and half-expecting that he would be cut off before he had to figure out the rest of the sentence. He wasn’t. Like every other conversation they’d had recently, it seemed not to follow the rules of their relationship. The lack of structure left him feeling irritable and panicky. If they couldn’t talk the way they always had talked, then what proof was there that they were still what they always had been? 

“Fine,” he finally relented, his tone exasperated and self-pitying. “I’ll be nicer to Hinata this week.”

Yamaguchi laughed in disbelief, putting a hand to his forehead as he shook it in amazement.

“How could you possibly— _ possibly— _ think that’s what this is about?”

“Is it not?”

“Of course you should be nicer to him! You should be nicer to everyone in your life! You are a deeply unpleasant person!”

“And you don’t think you’re a genius,” Tsukishima retorted dryly. “Stunning work, Yamaguchi, really very insightful, a unique perspective. Is that all? Should we talk about my other shortcomings next? We really could wait til the others get back for  _ that _ , they might like to join in, but I must say it means more coming from you!”

Yamaguchi frowned, a frown that reached all the way to the corners of his eyes and scrunched up his nose—every expression of his always used his entire face, ever since they were kids—and he threw down the handful of stakes and ties he was still clutching before putting his hands on his hips and glaring at Tsukishima.

“You know what sucks? You know what really sucks? This is actually an  _ improvement. _ ”

“What?” Tsukki was caught completely off guard.

“Yeah,” Yamaguchi sighed, looking very much like he was holding back tears, though whether they were born out of sadness or frustration was beyond Kei’s capacity to tell. “I hate fighting with you, Tsukishima. But at least when you’re being mean to me, I can understand you. At least when you’re being difficult and, and stubborn and prickly and rude, you’re  _ talking  _ to me! At least I know what to expect!”

Nothing he had said was incorrect, and Tsukki was vaguely aware that he should be ashamed of it, but the only reaction he could seem to summon was a profound numbness. Yamaguchi had used his full name. More than anything else which had occurred over the past few weeks, any other strange or confusing or difficult barrier which had arisen in their communication, this felt impassable. Tsukishima said nothing.

“Did you know,” Yamaguchi continued, more quietly, “that earlier in the car, when you apologized—that it was the first time you’ve ever said ‘sorry’ to me? Ever?”

“That...that can’t be true,” Tsukishima replied numbly.

“It is,” Yamaguchi’s frown deepened. “You don’t say sorry. You do something wrong and  _ I  _ say sorry, so you can say something else that means the same thing. Every time. But not this time.”

“So you stopped talking to me because I finally did something reasonable?” Tsukki was aware that he sounded bitter, but he  _ felt  _ bitter. He felt desperate, and afraid, and mean.

“I stopped talking because I didn’t know what to say! You scared me, alright? I feel like…” Yamaguchi moved his hands uselessly through space, looking for words that wouldn’t come easily. “I feel like I don’t know you lately. You keep giving me these little openings to get close to you and then shutting me out as soon as I try. You act like you want to be around me and then you decide you don’t want to even look at me.” He paused and caught his breath, inhaling shakily as the tears welling up in his eyes shone wetly in the sunlight. “I thought...maybe you were trying to say something and you just needed space, or the right moment, but even when it’s just  _ us, _ even when nobody else is around, even when I give you every chance I know how to, you are still just so—so—“

“Impossible?” Tsukki suggested, dully, thinking maybe if he could do nothing else to defend himself he could at least control the words used against him. Yamaguchi looked up, frustrated, but with that determined grimace that contained something unexpectedly like pity.

“Blocking a line shot from Lev Haiba is impossible,” he finally said. “You’re just...sad.”

The space between them hung empty and expectant, clearly waiting for something—anything—from Tsukishima to land there. It didn’t. Instead, he bent down and picked up the discarded fragments of the tent construction and began piecing them together. 

“What are you doing?” Yamaguchi asked him in disbelief.

“I’m being  _ practical _ ,” he replied. “I seem to remember somebody telling me that’s why I was invited on this trip.”

“That’s unfair, Tsukki, that is  _ so unfair— _ “

“Oh, are we back to Tsukki now? I was wondering.” He snapped another tent pole together, driving it into the ground pointedly as he went about his task.

“What is wrong with you?! Why are you being like this?”

“Because this is the only way I know how to be!” Tsukki’s voice came out louder and more exasperated than he had intended, and he nearly cringed back himself from the sound of it. “Because this is just how I am, and if you’re finally through with it, fine, but you don’t get to pretend like you didn’t know.”

Yamaguchi watched him quietly for a moment as he continued to persist at his pointless task with a single-focused determination. That look was still on his face, the one that looked a little sorry and a little sad and which made Tsukki feel more pitiable than his limited pride could stand. 

“Someday, Tsukki,” he said quietly—quietly enough that Tsukishima couldn’t tell at first if it was even meant to be heard out loud— “you’re going to get tired of being unhappy.” He paused for a moment and locked eyes in a way that sent a little shiver down Tsukki’s spine. “I know I am.”

This time Kei really did mean to say something, really did intend to open his mouth, ready to apologize if he had to, to spill out something much too honest and nowhere near complete enough, something he didn’t trust himself to figure out before it was already hanging in the air between them. And Yamaguchi must have seen it, because his face shifted, something more hopeful flickering behind his eyes again, something more trusting blooming like cherry blossoms behind his freckles as his lips parted just enough to breathe. It startled him, a little, how beautiful that face was.

“Tadashi,” he managed, and instantly realized why he had never allowed himself to say it before. It felt too much like polished rocks in his mouth, precious and slick, unreliable. He had no idea what would happen if he opened his mouth again. He tried anyway—honestly tried—but it was simply beyond his ability. He felt trapped behind the walls of his own mind, helpless to force the muscles that controlled speech and expression to do what was required of them. A sensation he didn’t recognize at first startled him into shock and silence as he suddenly felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks. His fingers flexed in something like mild panic as he stood, frozen.

Yamaguchi watched him, looking sad, saying nothing, and for the first time since he recalled this change in their relationship Tsukishima understood why. If Tadashi said something now, anything, before Tsukki found the words he needed to, then it would be the last time either of them approached this terrifying place. There was something just behind that realization, a larger and even more significant truth—something in the shape of understanding that Yamaguchi  _ wanted  _ him to say it, was  _ waiting  _ for him to say it, whatever it was, and that on its own might have been enough. He didn’t get the chance to find out.

_ “Tadashi-kun!” _ Hinata’s voice rang out across the little clearing that connected their campsite to the forest, clear and bright and uncomplicated.

“Over here, Hinata,” Yamaguchi called back. He didn’t break eye contact with Tsukishima, but the pink blossoms faded from his cheeks as his lips quirked downward in a frown. He exhaled sharply, then blinked a few times and rubbed away his tears with the heel of his hand. “ _ Gomen _ , Tsukki,” he muttered, and then the moment was gone.

~*~*

“Hey,  _ Sulky-shima!” _

Tsukki sighed and looked up from the useless match as it fizzled out in his hand.

“Yes, Hinata?”

Hinata crouched down next to him, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet as he examined the dead match and the vague wisps of smoke where a fire was supposed to be.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You’re the second person to start a conversation with me that way today.”

“Oh yeah? How’d the first one go?”

“Better than this,” Tsukishima sneered and rocked back on his heels. He relented a second later, “though not by much.”

“That’s too bad,” Hinata remarked, in a restless sort of way that indicated he was already bored with any conversation other than the one he wanted to be having. Tsukki considered making him work a little harder for it, but as it turned out, being mean for its own sake was a lot more exhausting than it had used to be and he had already done more of it today than he was proud of.

“Fine. What did you want to ask me?”

Hinata hopped up to his feet again, pacing slightly as he considered his words. Still, nothing could have prepared Tsukishima for what came out of his mouth.

“If you wanted to kiss me, how would you act about it?”

Tsukki snapped his head up, expecting to find himself at the center of a punchline, maybe looking into a wild grin from Hinata or perhaps the laughing faces of Kageyama and Yamaguchi emerging from hiding, because there was simply no way he heard the question correctly without it being an elaborate setup at his expense. But the only thing he found was Hinata staring at him expectantly, as much an open book as always. 

“What kind of question is that?” Tsukishima managed, hoping he didn’t look as wildly uncomposed as he felt.

“The only kind there is,” Hinata shrugged. “The kind I want an answer to.”

“Yes, I did get  _ that  _ far, Hinata.” Tsukki adjusted his glasses and stood up, dusting himself off and looking around for fresh kindling to occupy his hands with. “ _ Why  _ do you want me to answer that?”

“Because I can’t figure it out by myself!”

Tsukishima nearly choked on nothing.

“You can’t figure out if...I want to kiss you?”

“What?!” Hinata recoiled in a way Tsukishima might have bothered to find vaguely insulting if the whole thing hadn’t been utterly baffling to begin with. Or for the fact that his face was as red as his hair, a fact Tsukki opted not to notice for the sake of preserving any part of this which was conceivable to him. “No! That’s stupid! You’re stupid!”

“Good, because if that’s what you were after, you’re doing a bad job,” Tsukishima rolled his eyes and bent down to attempt sparking the fire again.

“Well that’s how you know I’m not, because if I  _ were  _ trying, I’d be doing a great job, so there.” Hinata crossed his arms defiantly and stuck out his tongue for good measure. 

“Great. Good talk, Hinata-kun. Glad I could help.”

“You didn’t help with anything yet!”

“Hm. That’s too bad.”

“Tsukishima!” Hinata whined, and something about it caused Tsukki to actually stop and take notice. He sighed and rocked back on his heels, actually looking up at the other boy, actually considering his face. Whatever was bothering him, it was clearly  _ really _ bothering him. Hinata wasn’t one to brood, and Tsukishima had never known him to spend more than the absolute necessary minimum amount of emotional energy on a problem that couldn’t be solved on the volleyball court. Of all the glaring differences between them, that was maybe the only one that wasn’t actually rooted in a commonality. Hinata was bold and overwhelming, Kei was reserved and acerbic. Both were because they cared too much. But when it came to the deep, lingering sort of turmoil that frequented his mind, that had seemed to belong to him alone—for all the times Hinata had been frustrated, or angry, or dejected, or confused, it didn’t seem to Tsukki that he had ever seen the boy  _ troubled _ . “Tsukishima, please.”

“Alright,” he relented at last. “But you have to make sense first.”

“I  _ am  _ making sense,” Hinata fell backwards onto the makeshift seat provided by an errant log with an exasperated sigh. “It’s  _ Kageyama _ who doesn’t make any sense.”

“No comment,” Tsukishima replied, wrestling back the urge to say something cutting or unnecessary. Partially because it would have done nothing but derail the conversation he had just agreed to have, but also—and this was worse, worse even than agreeing to be civil to Hinata—because he felt, in that moment, something irritatingly close to defensiveness for Kageyama. With Yamaguchi more distant and increasingly unreachable at every moment, and Hinata at the center of the new, warmer orbit he seemed to occupy, Kageyama was the closest thing to an ally that Tsukki had, and the imprint of their earlier conversation had not yet faded from his mood. “But what does Kageyama have to do with me?”

“Auuuuugh.” Hinata made a distressed sort of sound and leaned back on the log until his back thudded gently to the ground, grabbing the nearest volleyball—Yamaguchi’s, Tsukki noticed—and tossing it to himself in a straight trajectory above his chest. The repeated  _ thup-thup-thup  _ as he fell into a rhythm was sort of offhandedly mesmerizing. Hinata’s face smoothed out as his fingertips worked their magic, and Tsukki almost for a fleeting second felt he understood what it must be like to live with a brain like Shoyo’s, where instinct and impulse made everything so powerfully clear that the act of translating into words and thoughts and cognizance created barriers of its own. He wondered if it helped to be touching something, if it soothed him to have a hand on the ball, to have a ritual that made sense, or if it simply siphoned enough of the excess energy away from his brain that he could bear to exist on the same plane as the rest of them for a moment. 

“You and Kageyama are the same,” Hinata finally explained, “because I have no clue if you actually like me.”

The simplicity of the observation was striking, and it struck Tsukishima in a guilty sort of place.

“Of course Kageyama likes you,” he murmured, but it was a deflection and he knew it. “You’re inseparable.”

“Yeah, because we need each other in order to get what we want. But that’s the thing,” Hinata sighed, catching the ball for a second and spinning it before starting up his tosses again. “I want him to want  _ me. _ ”

With Kageyama’s indirect confession still lingering in his mind, Tsukishima suddenly found himself responsible for two complementary truths he didn’t ask to be holding. It seemed vaguely ironic, in a bitter sort of way, that two people with no real, actual obstacles to their feelings could end up totally by chance in a place where they relied on someone so inept at the art of happiness to bridge the connection. 

“So let me get this straight.” he sort of frowned a little and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, trying hard to keep all traces of unpleasantness from his voice as he organized his thoughts out loud. “You... _ have feelings  _ for Kageyama, and you can’t tell if they’re requited or not because Kageyama is, well, Kageyama, and so you want me to tell you how  _ I  _ would act if I was...interested, in someone, because you think it will help you figure out the signals you’re getting.”

“I knew you’d think it was stupid,” Hinata pouted, punctuating his frustration with a sharp flick of his wrists.

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Tsukki sighed. He rearranged twigs on the glowing embers of the fire as he similarly pushed thoughts around in his brain. He could, theoretically, do a nice thing for Kageyama here. Did he want to? Was he a good enough person for that? Even if he were, did he trust himself not to simply make things worse by his involvement? And what if he succeeded? Was it fair that he should get to make other people happier while he was miserable? “I guess...I feel bad for Kageyama-kun, is all.”

Hinata caught the ball and sat up immediately, fuming and nearly undone with an accusatory glare. 

“You don’t have to be a  _ jerk  _ about it, Stupid-shima, I thought you were being nice for a se—“

“That’s not what I meant,” Tsukki interrupted him sharply. “I don’t feel bad for Kageyama because you like him, alright? Give me a minute.” He tented his fingers and sorted out his next words, more cautiously this time. “I feel bad for him because everything he wants is right in front of him, and he doesn’t feel like he’s allowed to want it. I feel  _ bad  _ for him, because he has a chance to make a…” he paused for a second, then reluctantly gave Hinata a little shrug in surrender, “an  _ objectively _ extraordinary guy very happy, and even though he wants to, he can’t get out of his own way long enough to let it happen.”

Hinata considered all of this for a second, blinking those wide inscrutable eyes of his as Tsukki, uncomfortable with the moment, returned his attention to the fire. Neither of them said anything as he struck another match, laid it with gentle precision into the tinder at the center, and then blew gently as it sparked and glowed. For a moment, it seemed it wouldn’t catch—a wasted attempt that more than likely would have sapped the very last of Tsukishima’s already fragile patience. But, as they both watched, the wisps of smoke already seeming to die away, the wind suddenly shifted and it caught, hissing to life with a little flare before licking at the twigs and beginning to crackle. Tsukishima and Hinata both cheered aloud, grinning widely at each other before realization struck. Tsukki’s smile faded instantly. Hinata’s didn’t.

“I was totally right, wasn't I?” he pressed.

“What are you talking about?” Tsukki scowled, fixating on the flame and carefully feeding little twigs into the growing fire.

“You and Kageyama  _ are  _ the same,” Hinata announced knowingly, then hopped to his feet and picked up the volleyball, making as if to leave. “Oh, hey—“ he stopped and fixed Tsukki again with that wildcat grin. “You never answered my question. How  _ would  _ you act?”

Tsukishima scowled at him for a second, mostly out of habit, but it quickly melted into a reluctant half-smile and a little laugh.

“Honestly? I’d probably be a real asshole about it.”

The laugh that broke across Hinata’s lips gave Tsukishima a feeling that almost approached fondness. Somehow, it helped—the passing brightness backlit the shape of his own insecurity like the sun revealing the edges of clouds in an overwhelmingly overcast sky, gave it a form he could perceive and understand, traced shapes that fractured the expanse into pieces. And then, miraculously, broke through. 

“Tadashi,” he murmured to himself. 

“Wait your turn!” Hinata frowned, thrusting the volleyball emphatically toward Tsukki’s chest with a snap of his wrists. Tsukishima caught it, barely, and Hinata cracked his knuckles out in front of his chest before pointing to himself authoritatively. “ _ I’m  _ gonna go have a talk with Kageyama, so  _ you  _ have to stay here with the fire.”

“Why do you have to talk to Kageyama?” Kageyama’s unexpected approach put an expression on Hinata’s face that Tsukki didn’t feel even a little bit guilty for laughing at.

“Nobody is having a talk with  _ anybody. _ ” Yamaguchi was using his captain voice again, brushing off his hands as he followed Kageyama up to the fire. He crossed his arms decisively with a look that somehow surveyed all of them at once. “Not until we eat something.” The look he shot Tsukki implied a  _ yes, even you,  _ that did in fact make him feel a bit guilty, but there was an affection there too—a deliberate use of their shared unspoken space, a gesture and an offer that put a hopeful little flutter in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with a conversation that would have to wait. 

~*~*

The night sky was immense.

He had known this, of course, objectively, or at least as much as you can know it from inside a fluorescently lit classroom, which is to say he had  _ known  _ it but without really  _ grasping  _ it. Knowledge without understanding, Factuality without experience. The story of his life.

He looked up at the hundreds of thousands of pinpricks of light, shimmering across the sky, playing a sort of game with himself where he tried to focus in on individual stars before letting his gaze shift back out to the whole vast expanse. In and out, in and out. Focus and perspective. It made him dizzy, but not in a way that he minded. Everything felt different here. Quiet.

“Tsukki?” Yamaguchi’s voice called softly, from the direction of their tent. “Tsukishima?”

“Over here,” he replied, still looking up at the sky, still idly splaying his fingers out in front of the fire. He felt almost...comfortable. It would have been jarring, if it weren’t so serene.

There was the sound of a zipper, a few footfalls on gravel and grass, the gentle lilt of breathing in the night air as Yamaguchi came to stand behind him. For a moment that was all, just the presence and proximity of two bodies in the summer night.

“Are you coming to bed soon?” Yamaguchi finally asked. It was an impossibly neutral question. Tsukishima turned to look at him then, pulling his eyes away from the proximity of the campfire and the dusty expanse of the stars to take in the sight of Yamaguchi standing there in an old t-shirt. His long arms were wrapped awkwardly around his own torso as the mild breeze ruffled his hair. It was pulled back in a short ponytail in the way that Tsukki scoffed at when he first started doing it but secretly thought made him look, above all other things, extremely cool.

“Are you cold?” A small smile tugged at the corner of Tsukki’s lips.

Yamaguchi rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I...didn’t do a very good job packing,” he admitted. 

“The fire’s plenty warm,” Tsukki offered, gesturing to the space next to him on the log bench. “At least, it’s been keeping  _ me  _ warm, so…”

“So anything is possible,” Yamaguchi laughed. They shared a look for a hesitant, expectant moment, before Yamaguchi made his mind up and moved to take a seat. They sat there, side by side, staring into the fire, and for the first time in a while, the silence between them was comfortable. “I’m amazed you finally got this thing going.”

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Tsukki commented. “I was starting to think you just gave me an impossible task on purpose.”

Yamaguchi smiled guiltily.

“Well…”

“Yamaguchi. Seriously?”

“I was mad! And you were getting how you always get when you feel restless, so I figured...you know, birds and stones.”

“Hmph.” Tsukishima scoffed indignantly, but there was no real disdain behind it. The night was too beautiful, and Yamaguchi was...correct. “Luckily for all of us, I persisted, and provided for our survival.”

“I am, as always, impressed,” Yamaguchi shrugged, and waited for a beat before adding, “I  _ did  _ pack firestarter though.”

“ _ Ye of little faith. _ ”

Yamaguchi shook his head. “Man, I wish you had  _ any  _ idea how funny that is.”

Tsukki didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He picked up the stick he’d been using to tend the campfire and rustled the embers a bit, watching sparks dance up to join the stars overhead. Without looking, he could tell Yamaguchi was gazing up at them, too. There was a comfort in that, a familiarity that soothed him. He wished he could stay in this space forever—the place where it was just him and Tadashi, their thoughts and feelings laid bare before the universe without any need of the messy words that never quite got them there. 

“I meant what I said,” he said suddenly. “Earlier.”

Yamaguchi breathed deeply next to him, still looking up at the sky, still wrapped in his own arms. 

“I’m gonna have to ask you to be a little more specific, Tsukki, cause you said a lot of things and honestly...I was kinda hoping most of them  _ weren’t _ true.”

“Most of them weren’t. But I was...I was sorry. I am sorry.”

The fire crackled warmly. 

“I know,” Yamaguchi finally stated, with a little smile. Tsukishima waited for him to say something else—a  _ thank you _ , or an  _ it’s okay, I forgive you _ , or anything, really, that felt like an acceptance rather than an acknowledgement. He didn’t. What he did finally say was, “they’re beautiful, huh?”

“Yes,” Tsukki answered simply. He considered it a bit further before adding, “A little overwhelming.”

“Good way or bad way?”

“Good way.”

“Mm.”

“Hey.”

“Mm?”

“Did…” Tsukki hesitated. “Did you mean what you said too?”

“Probably,” Yamaguchi shrugged. “I pretty much always do.”

“I know,” he replied. They both smiled, just a little, before Tsukki’s face went somber again. “But I mean, are you...unhappy?”

The sharp exhale next to him told Tsukishima that he’d caught Yamaguchi off guard. He felt, more than saw, the other boy’s body shift, leaning forward to rest long arms on gangly knees, folding himself into something more vulnerable and more guarded all at once. 

“Not really, I guess,” he said. “But kinda. Only about one thing. It’s just...it’s a pretty big one thing. Why do you figure we can’t see this many stars at home?”

“Light pollution,” Tsukki answered offhandedly. 

“There aren’t  _ that  _ many lights where we live. Not big ones. It’s not like Sendai or Tokyo.”

“They don’t have to be big. Just close. Or at least closer than the stars. It’s all relative. Besides,” he shrugged. “When‘s the last time you really tried?”

“Huh. Are you unhappy?”

Tsukki frowned.

“I guess. Kinda. But only about a lot of little things. “

“Mm. Hey, is that the Big Dipper?”

“No idea.”

“You’re not even looking where I’m pointing,” Yamaguchi pouted. 

“It doesn’t matter, I’m terrible with constellations.”

“How is that possibly true?” Yamaguchi’s voice was skeptical, but bemused. “You’re one of the most observant people I’ve ever met, and you collect information like it’s going out of style.”

“I don’t know. They’re all just stars to me.” He leaned forward and toyed with the fire again, turning his attention to the glowing coals at the center of it. “I don’t get how ancient philosophers could look at a bunch of dots and decide it was a hunter or a crab or something. Shockingly, my imagination has its limits.”

“Well it’s not really about whether or not the dots make a clear picture,” Yamaguchi attempted. “It’s more like. The act of connecting them. The space in _ between  _ the stars, you know? You have to fill it in a little.”

Later, Tsukishima would look back on the moment and cringe inwardly, or simply pretend it had happened some other way entirely, but this was the truth: he looked up from the fire and into Yamaguchi’s eyes and, somewhere in the galaxy of his freckles, the picture completed itself.

“I have a constellation to make,” he said, stupidly.

Complete bafflement overtook Yamaguchi’s face.

“Do you mean a... _ confession? _ ” 

“No. Be quiet.”

Tsukishima dropped the stick he had been holding and, with scientific delicacy, placed his hands on either side of Yamaguchi’s face, his fingertips barely ghosting the other boy’s cheeks as he let his eyes trace the map of the world’s most familiar face. His mind was ablaze with little pinpricks of light—unasked for smiles, flutters in his stomach, moments where words no longer seemed to fit over the span of arduous weeks filled with signs that blinked into view as soon as he looked,  _ really looked _ for them—but these were just stars. The shape of them told a story much bigger.

Yamaguchi’s breathing hitched and for just the tiniest sliver of a second he froze. He blinked at Tsukki once, wide eyes curious but unafraid, and then leaned meaningfully into the whisper-strong touch of his hands with a patient little smile. And here was the rest of the story, the lines and arches Tsukishima had never dared to draw between them: Yamaguchi loved him back. This time, he didn’t wait for anyone else to speak first.

“I want to kiss you, Tadashi.”

Yamaguchi laughed a little, scrunched up his face in that way he did when whatever he was feeling was too big for the conventions of his smile, and grinned.

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi thanks again for reading! i’m sorry this took so long to finish, turns out: tsukki actively resists happiness, who could have guessed

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thanks for reading! I love camping!


End file.
